


Rogue-likes

by Eloarei



Series: Rogue [2]
Category: Hanna Is Not A Boy's Name
Genre: 19th Century, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Backstory, Christianity, M/M, Necromancy, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Universe Alteration
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-19
Updated: 2016-09-15
Packaged: 2018-05-07 14:22:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 21,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5459618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eloarei/pseuds/Eloarei
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Side-stories and extras based in and around the story "Rogue". </p><p>New, 2016 September 14 -- #8: Reaper <br/>(the last side-story before I (probably) post the final Rogue chapter!)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Werewolf Wedding

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Hanna takes a date to a wedding. 
> 
> This chapter takes place chronologically right after Chapter 4 of Rogue.

Anybody who lived in the city knew that the weather in the city was not especially pleasant. For that reason (among others), most weddings in the city were held in churches. Most weddings in the city were held _in the city_ too. However, it was, perhaps, not unexpected for werewolves to eschew such traditions.  
  
To be honest, Hanna had not been expecting an invitation. When the young werewolf showed up at his door (in human form; he could only tell the child was a wolf because of the familiar charm he was wearing), Hanna expected he'd come with orders for another batch of amulets for the pack leader. But then the boy handed him a pretty piece of paper. He stood at the door while Hanna unfolded and read the letter, the boy craning his neck in a way he probably hoped was subtle, trying to get a better look at the home of the mysterious man who was one of the few humans their clan trusted.  
  
Hanna opened the door wider for the kid as he perused the fancy note. Given the relative squalor the wolves lived in (although, to be fair, the courtyard was quite nice, and he hadn't seen the inside of their rooms, so possibly the outside was only kept in bad shape to attract less attention), Hanna hadn't expected such a pretty invitation. Then again, weddings tended to be a big deal for the sort of people who had them, and even the poorest of paupers wanted to do their best to make the occasion special.  
  
“You comin'?” the child asked, after he'd given Hanna enough time to read.  
  
To attend, or not to attend? Well, there were positives and negatives to the situation. The negatives consisted mainly of the fact that they were werewolves, which was not really a problem in itself, except that they'd threatened Hanna with implied bodily harm the first time they met. (Admittedly, it was self defense... in a way. But it still wasn't an enjoyable experience.) On the positive side, he'd pretty well come to terms with them since then, and they were now reasonable paying customers. Furthermore, according to the invitation, there was to be food at this event. He decided it would be rude not to accept.  
  
“I'll be there,” Hanna told the boy, who gave a sort of awkward bow, like he wasn't really used to dealing with humans and their weird customs.  
  
“Leader says that you can bring your partner if you want.”  
  
Partner? It took Hanna a moment to realize the boy meant the detective. He couldn't help but laugh. True, they'd been working together on a case the day they'd met the wolves, and they'd worked on a handful more in the month since, but Hanna wasn't really affiliated with the police department, so they couldn't exactly be called 'partners'. He didn't bother explaining that to the young wolf, though.  
  
“Thanks,” he said, giving the kid a penny for the trouble of coming so far into the city.  
  
He saw the detective again two days later, when the man had apparently just 'been in the area' for some reason or another and decided to stop by to say hello.  
  
“I'm sorry, I don't have any murder mysteries for you to solve today,” he said as he sat down at the table and scratched behind the ears of the cat that immediately presented itself. (It was Sith, but the detective was still only just familiar enough with them to tell who was who half the time.)  
  
“That's alright,” Hanna said. “I've got other jobs this week anyway. Actually, it's not this week, but I've got something for us in a fortnight, if you're interested. We were invited to a wedding: the werewolves from last month.”  
  
That situation was still the slightest bit of a sore spot for the detective, as it had been not an especially successful investigation, but the man was not the sort to hold a grudge, and the werewolves hadn't killed either of them, after all, so he had to appreciate _that_. “They invited me as well?” he asked. “Even though it was you who saved them?”  
  
“Er, yeah,” Hanna said, shrugging. “And honestly, you did at least half the work, even if they don't know it. You deserve to be there at least as much as I do. Anyway, they said there was going to be food.”  
  
The detective nodded a bit sideways. “I'll go, if you want me to.”  
  
Certainly, Hanna did want him to. He didn't fear the werewolves like he did when they first met (other than the light hesitation he'd probably always have around them, simply because he knew they could be dangerous if they wanted), but still he was unlikely to really know anyone there, aside from the bride and her mother, who he'd met only briefly enough to consider them acquaintances. It would be nicer to have a friend there, and better still for it to be the detective.  
  
“Only if you want,” Hanna told the man, feigning nonchalance.  
  
And so they went, when the evening came two weeks later. The walk to the wolves' ramshackle den didn't seem nearly as long when they weren't following a feather in a hat to lead them there. They arrived before the sun was fully down, although the wide round moon was already hanging high above their heads. They were greeted by a man who, like the boy from before, was presumably a werewolf, based on the circumstances and the charm hanging from his neck. He informed them that most of the rest of the pack was already at the site, finishing preparations, and that he would lead them there.  
  
“I feel like we should be more cautious in a situation like this,” Hanna said quietly to the detective, half joking, as they followed their guide out of the town and into the deepening darkness of the forest.  
  
“I don't get the feeling that we should be worried,” the detective said, “but I understand your meaning.” They laughed at themselves and each other and the fact that being caught up in questionably-unsafe situations was becoming so normal to them that they had to remind themselves to be apprehensive. Their guide pretended he didn't hear them.  
  
Ten minutes or so out from the wolves' fortress and another ten minutes or so into the forest, they found themselves in quite the lovely clearing, which was busy with both people and canines running to-and-fro on two or four legs. The moon shined brightly down and lit the clearing not quite as well as daylight, but well enough that with the help of only a few torches along the edges and middle of the cleared-out space, Hanna could see just fine. The area was set up somewhat like the wolves' courtyard, with stones set in the ground in geometrical patterns to create paths, which wound around and then converged on an arch that stood right in the middle. The arch was made of two small trees or somesuch plant that stood several feet apart at the bases and then were twined together at the tops. It was impressive, particularly to poor humans such as themselves, who were so surrounded by the grey squareness of the city all the time.  
  
The detective seemed especially pleased by it, and the rest of the set-up, perhaps because it was such a far cry from the threat of being maimed and killed that he had first associated with the wolves.  
  
Once they'd reached the area, their guide had excused himself and run off to join the last of the preparations, but it wasn't long that they stood around awkwardly before someone else appeared before them.  
  
“Good of you to come,” the pack-leader said, smiling genuinely. Her fangs showed, but only due to the wideness of her grin rather than any intimidation tactic.  
  
“Good of you to invite us,” Hanna responded.  
  
The leader bowed her head at him. “Most certainly. You are an honored guest, Mr. Cross. Without the help you have provided, it would be quite difficult to have the ceremony so near to the full moon.” She turned to the detective and bowed at him too, which seemed to surprise him. “And you as well, sir. Your cooperation has made this event possible. You have my thanks.”  
  
It was somewhat faint praise, but the detective nodded back to her and accepted it.  
  
“I must get back to the preparations, but dinner will be served shortly,” the leader told them, indicating the long tables on which large, meat-laden platters were being set. “Please eat and enjoy yourselves. The ceremony is to begin at midnight.” She bid them a temporary farewell and hurried away (but with a seemingly natural grace), so Hanna and the detective waited around a little longer until they saw others eating, then went to help themselves.  
  
Hanna didn't think he'd ever seen so much meat, even having been a butcher's assistant for some time. The large part of it was venison, and that wasn't an assumption on Hanna's part; most of it was still attached to the animal. Obviously, most of the guests were already in possession of a convenient set of tools with which to cut portions of flesh off for themselves, so they hadn't bothered to slice it up beforehand. Hanna didn't want to seem like too much of an outsider, so he took out the knife he was glad to have carried with him and carved out pieces for himself and the detective instead of waiting around for someone to help. Some of the wolves were consuming the meat raw, but others were sticking their pieces on skewers and roasting them over one of several bonfires, so the humans followed suit.  
  
“It's been a while since I've had venison,” Hanna mentioned as he tore into the meat, aware that he must seem like a child to the werewolves, who devoured much thicker pieces with ease, as if the flesh were as soft as cake.  
  
The detective ate his more delicately, less concerned about living up to wolvish expectations. “I've never had it before,” he said. He went back for another serving, though, so Hanna assumed he liked it.  
  
For drinks, the werewolves had brought several large barrels of what Hanna thought was beer, until he had drank a fair amount of it, and found it caused a rather stronger reaction than he'd been expecting. By then, however, he was in no position to care, and would have kept drinking if the detective had not steered him away from it, and then away from the fire, and then away from the fancy arch (which was clearly off-limits, awaiting the bride and groom), and then away from a sparring match between two half-transformed wolves, which Hanna was _sure_ he would have had a chance of winning.  
  
“Is there a stream anywhere nearby?” the detective asked a woman who was standing near the edge of the clearing. She pointed them in the right direction, and the detective hauled Hanna out that way, careful to guide them both over the uneven ground as best he could.  
  
“The party's back that way,” Hanna protested, tugging ineffectually.  
  
“We'll get back to it soon,” the detective said, setting Hanna down on the rocky bank of the small creek. “Drink fast if you're worried of missing it.”  
  
Hanna did as he was asked, mostly because every time he tried to get up and wander back in the direction of the clearing, the detective pushed him back down to the water. By the time he'd had enough to wash at least a little of the deliciously toxic wolf drink out of him, he was fairly soaked down the front of his fanciest shirt and his glasses were dripping from having fallen into the stream twice.  
  
“That'll do,” the detective said, suppressing most of a smile and plucking the frames from Hanna's face to dry them off on _his_ shirt (which hadn't entirely escaped Hanna's splashing, but was still considerably drier).  
  
“What th' hell's in that drink?” Hanna slurred to nobody in particular, curious for probably the wrong reason, if the detective had to guess.  
  
The party was still there when they returned, Hanna looking a little worse for the detour but sobered enough for the detective to let off the death-grip he had on the back of his jacket and let the magic-user wander off to do a little of the mingling he was still just drunk enough to be interested in. The detective stood back and observed from a distance for a few minutes before he was approached again by the pack-leader.  
  
“He is lucky to have such a faithful partner,” the leader said, watching the detective watch Hanna.  
  
Against his better judgment, the detective took his eyes from the necromancer to answer the wolf lady. “We work together on the occasion, but it isn't an official partnership.”  
  
“No, I had not expected that Mr. Cross were employed by the government.” The lady huffed a quiet laugh, demonstrating the obvious absurdness of the idea. “But the two of you _are_ partners, correct?”  
  
It was a question that the detective didn't know how to answer any better than he already had, so he told her, a bit confused, “We've known each other only the past two months.”  
  
The leader pursed her lips in something of an amused smile. “Indeed? Then you were only friends when we first met? Still, how aligned your scents are.” The detective knew nothing about scents, so he stood there and let her look him over as if he were some interesting new creature, her head tilting side to side like a dog's. “My daughter and her mate knew each other immediately. That's why we had so little time to plan his change. They were impatient, as I suppose young lovers will be. The two of you are rather young as well, though you seem less hasty than Lily. _You_ do, anyway. I take Mr. Cross for being the more eager.”  
  
“He is rather... energetic,” the detective agreed, glancing back to see that Hanna was still chatting with a group of wolf-people, regaling them with some story embellished with a fair amount of wild gesturing.  
  
The wolf-woman sniffed the air. “Ah, I'm sorry,” she said. “I didn't think our ale would have such an effect on a human. I should have thought.”  
  
Smiling, the detective shook his head. “He's this way even when not intoxicated, from what I've noticed.”  
  
“But not so trusting.”  
  
No, the leader was right about that; the reason the detective had noticed Hanna's talkativeness was because it was aimed at _him_ , ninety percent of the time. Hanna _was_ usually more reserved around others, perhaps for the fear of how they would react to his talents. Maybe he felt at home among the wolves.  
  
“I think he's comfortable around your people because they accept him,” he told the woman.  
  
She nodded. “But it is doubly so for you, being half as likely. We were bound to take to him, with what we are. You, one would think, were bound not to, and yet, here you are.”  
  
Again, it was true. The detective should not been fraternizing with the necromancer ( _or_ the werewolves, probably), at least according to regulations both explicit and implied. But he'd already come back to him far more than was excusable under the simple guise of needing assistance, and there was little doubt that he would continue to do so.   


“I apologize that I was rude to you when first we met,” the leader said. “The situation was rather dire. But I see now that you are a good man, and undeserving of the reputation your profession lends.”  
  
_That_ was not faint praise, coming from a citizen of the darker corners of the city, and he accepted it gratefully. “I try,” he said.  
  
It was then that Hanna returned, still the slightest bit wobbly, but looking partially recovered.  
  
“He returns to his natural habits as the drink wears,” the wolf-woman joked honestly.  
  
“Did you tire them out?” the detective asked, chuckling at the idea. (So far as they'd seen, werewolves seemed to have a near limitless energy, but if there were anyone who could wear one out with speech alone, Hanna might be it.)  
  
Hanna shrugged. “No,” he said. “I just...” _'-would rather talk to you,'_ he wasn't going to say, so he didn't say anything and he and the detective looked at each other in a sort of wordless communication they hadn't quite perfected.  
  
“The ceremony will begin soon,” the leader told them, though now she was addressing the detective primarily, “so I must go find Lily. If I don't see you afterward, thank you again for coming.” And so she left them to wait under the glow of the heavy, round moon.  
  
“...Who's Lily?” Hanna asked as the other attendees began to gather and face the arch.  
  
“The bride, I believe,” the detective answered, though he wasn't entirely sure either.  
  
“Oh. ...What's the leader's name?”  
  
The detective thought back. “I'm not sure.”  
  
A man from some yards away reminded them that there was no privacy to be had around werewolves, casually supplying, “It's Violet.” The humans waved back in thanks, though their embarrassment was probably tangible.  
  
The moon was straight above them when the ceremony began. The bride and groom appeared together from out of the forest and came to stand under the arch, in front of the leader, who began to speak. Unfortunately, Hanna and the detective were standing just far enough away that they couldn't make out any of the words. From the reactions of the wolf-people around them, the speech was both emotional and humorous. This went on for only a few minutes, before the congregation of wolves all changed into their half-forms (as wolfy as one could get without destroying your fancy human attire, Hanna guessed) and let loose a harmonious howl. And that seemed to be it.  
  
Ceremony over, the wolves mostly changed back to human form (though some seemed happy to leave on their claws and fangs and glowing eyes, and some hadn't left their full animal form all night), and began to clean up the clearing. The detective checked with a group carrying off trays nearby to see if that was all or if they wanted help with anything.  
  
“If you're going our way, you can take some mugs,” an old woman said, loading their arms with cups before she was even done speaking.  
  
“Looks like you're family now,” a young man teased as he set a large half-empty meat platter on each of his shoulders and gestured for them to follow him back through the dark forest.  
  
Though the roots and rocks made it dangerous, the trek back to the wolves' home was comfortable, filled with the friendly chatter of those in front and behind them in the scraggly procession. Everyone was comfortably tired and stuffed with venison and in a pleasant mood. When Hanna stumbled on some dark protrusion from the forest floor and dropped his armful of mugs, the wolves laughed with him like he was one of their own, picked him up and set him back on his feet, and distributed the mugs among their own heavy loads. Hanna stuck his hands in his pockets, embarrassed but cheerful, and continued to follow the crowd. When he stumbled again, he fell face-first into the detective, and caused the man to drop all _his_ mugs, which the wolves found uproariously funny.  
  
“Maybe you ought to carry _him_ ,” someone suggested of the detective as they distributed the second armful of cups, leaving the man's arms free for his partner. He didn't pick Hanna up and carry him bridal-style out of the woods, as some of the wolves were surely hoping, but he did lay a steadying hand on his shoulder, the grip just preventing the necromancer from face-planting several more times.   
  
The groups parted ways when they reached the edge of the city, with much enthusiastic waving and preemptive invitations to the wolves' next wedding, whenever and for whomever it was.  
  
“I'm never going to another human wedding,” Hanna said, as he and the detective made their way out of the slums and back into the heart of the city. “This was the best I've been to by far. I was worried it was going to be like the weddings I went to as a kid.” He was infinitely grateful for the lack of kneeling and the blessed succinctness with which Miss Violet had given her speech.  


“It was nice,” the detective said, smiling down at Hanna, who seemed almost entirely sober by now. “How are you feeling?”  
  
Hanna turned around and began to walk backwards, stretching his arms out behind him. “Great,” he said. “After the initial confusion, that drink left me feeling f--”  
  
Not quite back into the well-paved areas of the city, Hanna's heel caught on an uneven piece of road and, predictably, he stumbled. He'd have gone backwards and cracked his skull on the street if the detective's reflexes were less impressive. As it was, the detective yanked Hanna's arm toward him, and the necromancer stumbled forward into the man's chest, narrowly avoiding cracking the top of his head on his chin.  
  
“I think perhaps you should leave it to the wolves,” the detective suggested, fixing Hanna with a more amused than admonishing look as he disentangled them from each other and gently set Hanna right.  
  
Quite the opposite was running through Hanna's head as he laughed and vaguely agreed in a non-promising way. Injury aside, the drink had had some fun affects, and he rather hoped, instead of abstinence from it, he could get the detective to drink _with_ him next time, maybe when he perfected the brew himself.   
  
“Could you remind me to restock my belladonna next time we're out?” he asked less than subtly, turning to walk backwards again.  
  
“I think not,” the detective said, reaching out to turn Hanna back around and leaving his hand there on his shoulder. He didn't know what belladonna was, but he knew Hanna well enough by now. “I suggest you find something else to occupy your time.”  


“I've got plenty,” Hanna said, pleasantly aware of the steadying hand on his shoulder. He had his magic, his business, his cats, and something else rather new and exciting. This would do for now.  
XxX


	2. Homebrew

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Hanna attempts to get a few people drunk.
> 
> This chapter takes place chronologically right after "Werewolf Wedding".

Despite the fair amount of secrecy required for his chosen profession, Hanna really didn't like lying. Now, withholding the truth and twisting peoples' words to suit his needs were entirely different matters. He had hummed in a sort of vaguely agreeing way when the detective had told him not to mess with the werewolves' drink, but he'd never promised not to, and that was the important part. Another notable detail was the fact that what Hanna was making was technically not at all related to the potent concoction he'd partook of at the wolf wedding, at least not as far as he _knew._ His homebrew was, at best, an approximation of that delicious drink, not a replication. His recipe relied on hypotheses, which were little more than well-informed guesses based on what he knew of werewolf physiology and local flora. In fact, the likelihood that his drink would bear more than a passing resemblance to theirs was quite slim.  
  
He hoped he could still get the two of them drunk off it, at least.  
  
For several weeks, he'd kept a nice big pot of the brew simmering in the kitchen corner of his room, periodically adding to it until the color, smell, and taste were as similar as he could manage, based on what he remembered from the ceremony, which had been several months ago by now. Hanna avoided the detective's admonition by frequently visiting the man at _his_ apartment before the man had a chance to initiate contact. Sith and Sabo were annoyed at the lack of their favorite visitor, but Hanna kept them appeased with offers of extra cream; he didn't put it past them to rat him out to the detective somehow if he didn't bribe them to silence.  
  
Now, though, the brew seemed almost done. It looked and smelled and tasted fantastic. The only test left was of its potency. He ladled some out and poured it into a mug to cool over night, and when the morning came he emptied the glass of its room-temperature liquid in one long shot.  
  
“It's _science_ ,” he told Sith, who gave him a skeptical look. “It's never too early in the morning for science.”  
  
Nor, he found several hours later, was it too early in the morning for this drink, even by puritan standards. The first cup had done nothing, other than pleasing his tongue, as he'd already known it would. The second cup, likewise. After the third cup, he thought he might have felt a slight tingle, but even a fourth and fifth mug did nothing to elevate it to a noticeable level.  
  
_'What a disappointment,'_ he thought, though he kept drinking anyway, because it was pretty tasty.  
  
The next time the detective came to call, Hanna didn't bother making any excuses and let him in like normal.  
  
“What are you cooking?” the man asked suspiciously, eying the steaming pot where it sat cooling atop the unlit stove. By now, he was fully aware of Hanna's lack of culinary skill, and more than a little wary of any attempt he might make.  
  
“You know that wolf drink you told me not to bother with?”  
  
The detective shook his head, but he couldn't hide his smile; he _liked_ Hanna's antics and they both knew it. “I shouldn't be surprised,” he said.  
  
Hanna waved, dismissing the idea. “Don't worry. I messed it up anyway. It's not alcoholic in the slightest. I drank almost half of it a week ago and I've been trying to fix it since, but I can't get it right. I think I'm done with it.”  
  
“That's probably for the best,” the detective said, smiling apologetically, though Hanna knew he was glad.  
  
He sighed. “I suppose. It's still good though, if you want to try it. The _taste_ is right, at least.” He poured them mugs and didn't bother to let his finish cooling before emptying it.  
  
Sniffing at the warm liquid, the detective made a surprised pleased face. He also neglected to let it cool any further before he took a sip, probably glad for the temperature of it since the weather had turned so chilly recently. He took another sip, and then a larger drink when he determined it was not dangerously hot. “It _is_ good,” he told Hanna, drinking his approval. “Better than the wolves', I think.”  
  
“Did you even have any?” Hanna asked, thinking back. “I didn't notice you acting weird.”  
  
The detective laughed. “I drank a responsible amount so, no, you wouldn't have.”  
  
“The amount I drank wasn't irresponsible!” Hanna insisted in defense of his actions, though he was laughing as well. He knew the detective wasn't trying to insult him, at least not any more than a quarter of what he deserved. “Now, it would have been irresponsible if someone hadn't been there to watch out for me, but I knew you would be. That's what friends are for, right?”  
  
“By what definition?” the detective asked jokingly. He knocked back the rest of his drink and looked quite pleased to do so, so Hanna poured them both second glasses.  
  
“I didn't decide it!” Hanna said, handing the second mug over and taking a deep swig of his own. “Everyone knows.”  
  
Taking another drink, the detective looked at Hanna over the rim of his mug with an amused expression. “Is that so? Then who am I to defy conventional wisdom.”  
  
Hanna held his mug up in a toast. “Exactly,” he said, sipping a bit more. He looked down and studied the liquid sloshing softly in the cup. God, it really was delicious, which even Hanna had to admit was a surprise, since he was the one who brewed it. No, this didn't exactly count as cooking, but the drink had come out edible... or... drink-able, the key feature he usually failed at in his attempts at food preparation. He wondered if he ought to try making his meals alcoholic next time, and then perhaps end up with something normal.  
  
It really was perplexing to him how he could have gotten that part wrong. The alcohol was supposed to be the easy part of making any drink! What was difficult was making it any good, yet somehow he'd gotten it the other way around.  
  
_'At least it isn't toxic,'_ he thought to himself. It certainly could have been worse. However, as he looked over at the detective, Hanna had to do a mental double-take on the brew's ingredients, because the man's face was rather red. His first thought, of course, was not alarm, assuming the color was only because it was so cold outside, but the detective had acclimated to the warm temperature of the apartment minutes before, and his face had returned to its normal hue some time around his second sip of Hanna's concoction. His second thought was that the man was having an allergic reaction to something in the drink.  
  
“Are you feeling well?” Hanna asked, searching his face for any unusual splotches or puffiness.  
  
“I'm fine,” the detective said quite genuinely. “A bit warm, maybe.”  
  
He certainly looked it. As the man loosened the collar of his shirt to an almost publicly-indecent level, Hanna could see that the flush of his face extended down his neck to his chest. That didn't seem to be enough, as the man gently dislodged the cat that had settled on his lap so that he could stand and remove his coat as well. “Do you mind?” he asked before hanging the jacket near the front door.  
  
“Make yourself at home,” Hanna said, gesturing widely. Honestly, he was almost surprised the man even asked anymore, especially given the state of undress he sometimes found his host in. It was nothing improper, it just wasn't the layers in which the detective usually dressed. Currently Hanna was wandering about in yesterday's trousers and a wrinkled shirt with the sleeves pushed up unevenly, which was fairly normal attire for him on days during which he didn't plan on leaving the house. And still the detective felt the need to ask if it was acceptable for him to remove a single article of outerwear.  
  
Relieved of his coat, the detective sat back down. “Thank you,” he said. The cat jumped back onto his lap, and he pet it with one hand while he finished off the rest of his second drink with the other. “Do you think we ought to have dinner?”  
  
Hanna wasn't really hungry, but it had been most of the day since he'd eaten. “Sure,” he said. He held up his mug. “What goes well with this? I want to finish it off tonight so I don't have to be reminded of my failure any longer.”  
  
The detective took another drink to study the flavor. “Cheese?” he guessed. “Bread? Let me try some more. It's an elusive taste.” So Hanna refilled their glasses (far be it from him to tell the man when to stop, and _he_ certainly wasn't planning to, without the usual side-effects to halt him), and the detective drank nearly the whole thing before declaring, “carrots.”  
  
Hanna let out a bark of laughter. “ _Carrots?_ I think not! There is no such thing as a drink that goes well with vegetables. Stop trying to make me into a rabbit.”

The two of them 'argued' for some time over whether humans were supposed to eat greens (Hanna, the only child of a fairly well-off family, had been able to avoid most vegetables when he was young; as an orphan, the detective had eaten whatever was available to him, hence his wider palate), over whether potatoes counted as vegetables (no, said Hanna, because no vegetable could taste that good; yes, said the detective, because it _is_ a vegetable), and over the best way to cook eggs (over-easy, said the detective, because the yolks had just the right consistency; scrambled, said Hanna, because that was the only way he knew how to make them), and they were about halfway through their fifth mugs when Hanna realized they'd gotten distracted from figuring out dinner.  
  
It was also then when he realized that the detective was ...drunk.  
  
_'That's... not... ...possible?'_ he thought. He took a quick sniff of his drink. It didn't smell alcoholic, but neither had the wolves' version, and boy had that messed him up good. Furtively, Hanna glanced back over at the detective. The man was being oddly talkative. At the moment, he seemed to be holding a conversation with the cat. This was not _entirely_ ridiculous, as Hanna talked to his cats all the time, but to the best of his knowledge the detective was not capable of understanding their replies, nor was he usually given to displaying quite that level of silliness.  
  
“The constable wanted me to leave it alone, but I thought arresting him was the right thing to do. You'd've done the same thing.”  
  
“Mrr- mrrrrow.”  
  
“Hmm. I s'pose I could've done. Not a bad idea.”  
  
Hanna observed in a sort of shocked silence, side-stepping to and from the stove to refill their cups so he didn't lose sight of the man. He set the detective's back down in front of him and grinned quite unconvincingly, but the man seemed fooled. He smiled back and kept drinking.  
  
This situation was surreal for a number of reasons. First of all, Hanna had never seen the detective drunk, or even near to that state. The man was fastidious in his sobriety, probably always trying to keep himself level-headed in case he was called upon to keep the peace. Secondly, Hanna was not also drunk, so he was able to really watch the scene unfold with the utmost clarity. If _he_ was drunk, everything would most likely seem totally normal. As it was, it seemed a bit like something out a Shakespeare comedy, plans gone wrong in the oddest of ways.  
  
Although... this sort of _had_ been the plan, hadn't it? He wanted to get the detective drunk, see what the man was like without that smooth veneer of vigilance. So in that case, it had gone right. But the fun was somewhat lessened by Hanna's own soberness. Being drunk _with_ friends was nice; being around drunk friends when you weren't the slightest bit intoxicated yourself was only awkward. He drained the rest of his mug and poured himself another. The large pot was nearing empty and he wasn't sure if what was left would be enough to tip him over the edge.  
  
“Any corpses to dig up tonight?” the detective asked casually.  
  
Hanna swallowed a mouthful of liquid with determination, then shook his head. “No. I planned to stay in tonight. You're welcome to stay as long as you like.”  
  
The detective nodded slowly, his expression introspective, or perhaps just tired. “I think I might.”  
  
There was enough drink left for at most four or five mugs. Hanna wanted to down it all in a mad bid to have it affect him in some way, but he figured he could spare at least one more for the detective. The man was slowing down visibly now, his uncharacteristic chatter calming to normal, reserved levels of conversation, if still a bit less formal than usual. His hair had become disheveled even though he'd been just sitting there pretty much all evening, and he'd taken off his shoes at some point. Hanna didn't think he'd be up for more than this next mug, or 'up' at all for much longer. He drank faster.  
  
“I like your cats,” the detective said, sipping from his mug in an unhurried manner as he stroked down Sith's back to his white-tipped tail.  
  
“I do too,” Hanna agreed. They were _his_ familiars, after all; he ought to like them.  
  
“We were never allowed to have pets,” the detective reminisced. He didn't say so specifically, but Hanna was pretty sure he meant at the orphanage; he didn't think the police force cared if they had animals living in their houses. “Some of the children found mice or frogs and hid them in boxes under their beds, but that never lasted long.”  
  
Hanna was about to say that that sounded like a miserable way to live, to have to hide things that were important to you for fear of the trouble you'd get into if anyone found out, but then he remembered the process of learning magic and practicing in secret in the dead of night, always anxious that someone would discover him. He didn't bother mentioning it. Instead he said, “I never had any pets as a child either.”  
  
The detective laughed a little. “Aren't you still a child?” he asked, and he said it in a light, joking tone of voice, but one that implied he thought he knew the answer.  
  
“Excuse me, I am a fully-fledged adult!” Hanna said, indignant but not terribly surprised, he had to admit. He had always been a little... small... for his age, and the unruliness of his hair and the size his glasses made his eyes look probably didn't help him seem any older. And the fact that he lived on his own was not a good indicator of age either, he supposed. There were quite a lot of older children living by themselves or with others here in the city. He and the detective were not alone in lacking parents, not by a long shot. But Hanna _was_ an adult, if only just.  
  
“Oh.” The detective looked a little embarrassed. “That changes things.”  
  
“How so?” Hanna asked.  
  
“Ah... I'm... I guess it doesn't, really.”  
  
“Of course not,” Hanna said, taking a long swig of his brew to further prove his adult-ness. Although, honestly, he _could_ think of a few things that his being an adult might change. He hoped it would help the detective open up to him more, without needing to be drunk.  
  
Which, of course, brought him back to the matter of this drink. He was down to the last half of his last mug, bringing his total for the last hour or so to about eight, and he was not feeling a damn thing. Meanwhile, the detective looked like he was about to pass out as he finished his fifth. Clearly, even he had decided it was strange.  
  
“Hanna, are you sure there's no alcohol in this?” he asked, stumbling just slightly over the words.  
  
“ _I_ feel fine,” Hanna replied, shrugging. He smiled slyly because he couldn't help it, but he got away with it because the detective's head was down on the table and his eyes were closed. “Why? Are you not feeling well? Maybe you're sick.”  
  
“Hmm,” was all the detective said for a long moment, before he slowly drawled, “No, I feel fine.” And he was smiling too, so Hanna knew what that meant.  
  
“If you say so,” he said quietly. He watched for a few minutes as the detective sat slumped at the table in a half-conscious daze, and then went over and fluffed up the pillows and blankets on his bed. “I think you'd be more comfortable on a surface _meant_ for sleeping.”  
  
The detective shook his head, or at least seemed like he was trying to. “I'm not sleeping,” he said, though he made no attempt to raise his head.  
  
“But you're not going back to your apartment tonight either, are you?” He wedged his hands under the detective's arms and heaved him to his feet, sort of glad for once for all that grave-digging experience his muscles had. Slowly they made their way across the room, with the detective eventually sighing and getting the majority of his weight on his own two feet. Still he fell quite heavily down on top of the quilt when they got there. He hummed a sort of thanks and mushed his face into the pillows, and was dead asleep within minutes.  
  
Hanna went and took the vacated seat at the table. He watched the detective sleep off his drunken stupor with just an edge of jealousy. The man really was quite smashed, while Hanna was as sober as a funeral. What the in world had happened?  
  
“I guess I'll just have to try harder next time, huh?” he said to his cats as they jumped up on the bed and curled up on the small of the detective's back and between his legs.  
  
“Myeh,” Sabo replied, and Hanna laughed.  
  
Well, the detective looked extremely comfortable, and Hanna wasn't the slightest bit tired, so he figured he'd leave the man there to rest as long as he needed. Even sleeping, Hanna preferred his company to anyone else's or none at all. He gathered his note book and spent the rest of the night trying to refine the knock-off wolf drink recipe, inspired by the detective's snores to do better with the next batch.


	3. Hanna Gets Sick

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's probably not the plague, Hanna, stop whining.
> 
> This chapter takes place any time after Homebrew, but before or during Chapter 6.

This was unusual. No, not _unusual; impossible!_ Or damn near, anyhow. Hanna hadn't been sick _once_ since his parents died, not a single instance of a sniffly nose in over 10 years. And here he was now, lying in a miserable heap in his horrible cold apartment, every one of his blankets bundled around him, with his single decent coat thrown over the top of the pile, feeling like he was going to die. (He wasn't going to die, and he knew it, but it certainly didn't make him feel any better.)  
  
It was probably the plague. What else could it be? Nothing. It couldn't possibly be anything less. Necromancers didn't catch _colds,_ and they didn't get _the flu,_ and they weren't affected by the god damn _night air_ (which was a myth anyway; when were people going to figure that out? Good lord.).  
  
He glared (or tried to glare) at Sith and Sabo, who were curled up together on the very top of his pile. “You two are supposed to keep this place clean of rats,” he croaked. “I should get myself a more useful familiar. One who actually _listens_ to me.” Sabo yawned and Sith whipped his tail around. They knew he was bluffing.  
  
So, Hanna felt absolutely horrid. He could barely breathe, could hardly move, and mucous was on a non-stop drip from every available opening in his face. He certainly wouldn't be able to get any work done this way. (Not that corpses were at risk of catching anything from him, luckily, but not even his strongest magic could get him to the cemetery at this point.) But the worst part about being sick was not being able to see the detective. They'd planned to meet up tomorrow for... dinner or something, some excuse or another; really, he couldn't remember and it didn't matter. But now Hanna was stuck here without even a way to tell the detective he couldn't make it. (Sith and Sabo were smart, but he didn't think he'd be able to get them to take a message to the man's apartment, and he probably couldn't hold a pen still enough to write a letter anyway.)  
  
He hoped the detective wouldn't be offended when he didn't show up. The man had to know by now that Hanna would never abandon their plans for no reason. Still, he couldn't help being a little worried. Not worried; concerned. Or maybe worried. ...Or maybe that sinking uncomfortable feeling in his heart was from the sickness.  
  
Eventually, Hanna put the worry from his mind long enough to fall asleep. Probably. He wasn't entirely sure. He thought he might be a little delirious, actually. He was woken from his dozing by a familiar knock on the door. (Yes, he knew the detective's knock. It was distinctive!)  
  
“Hanna. Are you in there?”  
  
Honestly, Hanna _tried_ to answer, but what came out was little more than a dry creaking. He sighed and rolled his eyes at himself and tried again, but no really audible words were happening.  
  
“I waited nearly an hour. Did you forget the time?”  
  
Hanna's internal clock ticked in angry confusion. They were supposed to meet _tomorrow_ , weren't they? Unless somehow he'd been laying in his pathetic pile of blankets for longer than an entire day and hadn't noticed? He cursed himself for not somehow avoiding this horrible illness.  
  
“I'm coming in,” the detective said, waiting a good long moment before turning the handle and pushing the door open. (After months of the detective showing up at his apartment unannounced (though not unwelcome), Hanna had added his signature to the lock rune, allowing him the ability to open the door if Hanna wasn't able to get it. It was also convenient for when they came back from trips to restock his ingredients and the short necromancer had his hands too full to work the doorknob. It was less convenient that one time that neither of them would ever mention again, and probably the reason the detective always now gave ample warning when he was about to enter.)  
  
As much as he would rather that nobody see him like this, Hanna was admittedly glad to see the detective's face. He thought he probably smiled, despite himself and despite how achy all the muscles in his face were.  
  
The detective closed the door gently behind him and approached the lump of blankets. “I thought you might have found something more interesting to do.”  
  
More interesting than meeting up with the detective? Hanna would gladly dismiss the idea, but only if he thought the other man would take it as a joke; they weren't quite at the point in their relationship where they were comfortable being entirely honest about their adoration of each other. At least, Hanna wasn't. “Way more interesting,” he said, managing a little more than a hoarse whisper.  
  
“I see.” The detective knelt down by the bedside and greeted the two cats, who quickly found their way into his lap. He gave them the required scratches before setting them aside and turning to the sickly magic user. “How are your symptoms?”  
  
“Ugh,” Hanna said, or grunted, or groaned, dreading the idea of having to dredge up all the words to describe how badly he was feeling. He settled for a disgusting, phlegmy, “Bad.”  
  
“I imagine so,” the detective said, coming to sit on the edge of the bed by what he assumed was Hanna's shoulder under the cocoon of covers. He set his hand on Hanna's forehead, then softly on his cheek, which was not quite as red as his hair, but far from as pale as it normally was. “You're very warm. Usually you're cold.”  
  
“Euh,” was Hanna unintelligible response. He closed his tired eyes and focused on the coolness of the detective's hand and the soft stroking motion the man was probably not doing consciously.  
  
“I'm surprised. From all those charms you carry on you, one would think you'd be immune to all types of harm.” He looked Hanna in the face (his eyes were still closed) and gave him a challenging look that the magic user could not see but could almost feel. “Or perhaps you've become immune to them from the exposure.”  
  
Hanna wanted to argue that he was at no risk of becoming null to the charms' magic, and _no_ his necromancy was not at fault for his sickness, and dammit, the man needed to stop all that worrying because Hanna _knew what he was doing_ , but he was too tired for all of that, and he definitely didn't want to start a fight with the detective right now (even though he knew he'd win just by virtue of the detective taking pity on his sorry state). “'m not gonna die,” he croaked. And it was true. He wouldn't die. He could tell. But the detective could, if he became sick. The man refused his charms and protections and so was just as at risk as anybody else in this accursed city. So Hanna added shakily, “Go away.”  
  
The detective moved his hand away and replaced it with the other, still fresh and cold. His fingers weaved through the messy curls at Hanna's hairline, massaging softly. “I should stay to take care of you. I'll bet you haven't eaten a thing.”  
  
“ 'don't need to eat,” Hanna said, honestly glad it was true, otherwise he'd have probably starved already.  
  
“Mm-hmm,” the detective hummed, utterly unconvinced.  
  
It wasn't that Hanna thought he had won, but he thought the detective had perhaps at least given up on his foolish quest to care for him, and when the man got up to leave some indeterminate time later, Hanna was sad and missed his cold fingers and warm presence badly, but was glad the man was finally listening to him. He fell maybe-asleep for a while. When he awoke again, it was colder and the darkness of the night was invading the room, except for a fresh candle on the bedside table that he could barely see from the corner of his eye.  
  
“You're awake,” the detective said from somewhere out of view. He rounded the corner and came to stand by the edge of the bed where Hanna could see him. “Are you feeling any better?”  
  
“ _No,_ ” Hanna grouched, but the fact that the word was more vocalization than the crackle of mucous did not escape either of their notice.  
  
“If you're awake, you should eat. Here.” He held out a bowl of soup, which was steaming and probably smelled quite delicious to anyone who had functional olfactory senses. He noticed that Hanna was struggling weakly to sit up against the headboard. “Do I need to feed you?” he asked, tone neutral but eyes teasing.  
  
“Let me starve,” Hanna said dramatically as he slumped back and prepared to be treated like an invalid child. He sighed with a slightly greater annoyance than he actually felt and opened his mouth enough for the detective to spoon in a little bit of soup. The liquid was vaguely warmer than his feverish insides and, though he wasn't hungry and honestly did not have to actually eat, was comforting.  
  
“What would you do without me?” the detective joked rhetorically as he patiently fed the drowsy, pathetic necromancer.  
  
“Be miserable,” Hanna admitted between small mouthfuls. He'd probably never thank the detective, may never even bring the situation up again once he was back on his feet, but this small, honest response was all the detective needed, at least for now. Perhaps later he would fish for a deeper confession.  
  
Hanna let the feeding continue, one part begrudgingly, one part in a pleased, sleepy haze, until the bowl was empty. “Satisfied?” he asked. “Will you leave now? We don't both need to be sick.”  
  
“Do you really want me to go?”  
  
Hanna wasn't a liar. Well, a liar by omission, sometimes, yes, but rarely an outright liar. He couldn't say 'yes, I want you to leave' when it was so far from the truth. “Just get out,” he said, voice scratchy.  
  
The detective shook his head. “I'm afraid I can't. I'm sworn to protect the people. You are the one most in need of protection now.”  
  
That logic was flimsy at best, just a silly excuse and they both knew it. It was stupid, and it made Hanna smile. “Fine, do what you like,” he said. He mustered his strength and scooted over as much as he could towards the wall, determined that if the detective was going to stay the night, he would at least not wind up sleeping in a chair like some watchful nurse by someone's deathbed. “Catch the plague for all I care.”  
  
“The plague looks quite a lot like the flu this year,” the detective said with a short laugh, sitting in the spot Hanna had half-vacated, then pulling his long legs up against the bundle underneath of which was Hanna. “Are you cold? Do you need more blankets?”  
  
“This is all I have,” Hanna said, not facing the detective, who was laying probably closer than he'd ever been, who was warm and (as he could see from his periphery) looking at him. “Get Sith and Sabo up here. They're like small furnaces.”  
  
“They left when I returned with the soup. I think they wanted to give you some privacy.”  
  
Hanna did turn then, a little, so that the detective could see his skeptical raised eyebrow. “Me?”  
  
“ _Us,”_ he amended, his expression a bit like an apology, like when he came too early in the morning and wasn't sure Hanna would be up for an adventure, even though Hanna gladly went with him every time.   
  
The necromancer wasn't sure what to say to that: us. So he said nothing about 'us'. “I guess we'll have to keep warm on our own,” he said, clearing his throat a little.  
  
“I guess so.” The detective smiled softly at him before reaching over to put out the candle.  
  
Moonlight still shined through the windowpanes, illuminating the detective's face and casting Hanna's in shadow. Hanna could see, as they settled down to sleep (or try to sleep, or pretend to sleep), that the detective seemed at peace, surprisingly unconcerned that he may come down ill from being so near for so long.  
  
“You really don't care if you get sick?” he asked quietly, the darkness seeming to necessitate whispers.  
  
“I'll be fine,” the detective said, closing his eyes. “Worry about yourself.”  
  
Hanna puffed air at him in gentle, tired frustration. “You make no sense,” he murmured, although when the man reached up to run his fingers over his fevered brow and through his hair again, Hanna had to admit to himself that the detective really did make sense. More sense than Hanna wished he understood. He fell asleep a few minutes later, lulled by the gentle scratching, trying to convince himself he regretted becoming so close to the detective, letting the man's strong conscience rub off on him. It was a battle with himself he would never win.  
  



	4. Books about Zombies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the zombie tries to learn more about his kind. 
> 
> Takes place during chapter 9, which I haven't posted yet, sorry. It's not especially spoiler-heavy though, except "they go to the library".

There wasn't a single person yet who had not given him some sort of strange look when they first saw him. Some had been surprised, others confused, even a few had seemed intrigued. But the lady who tended this library had not appeared too disturbed when he and Hanna walked in some half an hour ago, and so he decided that he would ask her for assistance.   
  
She looked up at him when he approached the front desk, but then looked back down at the paper upon which she was writing. After a moment she returned her gaze to him, her expression somewhat bored and annoyed, though not enough to be considered entirely unprofessional. “Can I help you?” she asked. She did _not_ , in fact, seem all that keen to help, but as she was offering, and as he was fairly certain it was at least one aspect of her job, he answered, with another question.   
  
“Do you know where I might find books about...?” He hesitated, reluctant to say the word. It still seemed so strange to him, like he hadn't heard it before the past week, like maybe it was not even a real word at all but just something Hanna had come up with, an elaborate prank all of his friends were in on. Of course, he was sure that was not the case; the little necromancer was hiding things, that was for sure, but he wasn't the type to pull mean jokes on people. Even so, given his current state, the word was a little embarrassing. “--books about zombies,” he finished.   
  
The clerk looked a bit like she thought he was joking, but also a bit like she was fully expecting it. “Fiction or non-fiction?” she asked, unamused, because if this was a joke, it wasn't a very funny one. “You'll find more in the fiction section,” the woman added.   
  
“May I see both?” he asked, somewhat unsure, because the clerk's tone wasn't especially inviting.   
  
She didn't nod, but she got up with just a tiny well-hidden sigh, typical of the eternally tired, and led him into the maze of books. They stopped first at 'mythology' and she pointed out a few with passing relevance, then he followed her to 'crypto-science', and pulled a couple of books out to add to his small stack. (He noticed a resigned look of disbelief, but was fairly certain it was aimed at the section name, not at him.) After that, they stopped by 'horror', their first foray into fiction, obvious due to the far greater selection of zombie-related novels, and she mentioned a few by title, but didn't specifically pick any for him, probably for fear of weighing him down too much. He grabbed two that sounded interesting just based on their titles before they moved on to 'graphic novel', which was apparently a fancy name for picture books.   
  
Last, they took a quick trip to 'romance', where the clerk left him to fend for himself after making a few suggestions. (The look she had here was a very inward sort of despair.) The fact that undead featured at all in romance novels was surprising to him, to say the least, and although he was a little weirded-out by it, he couldn't help also being intrigued. Why did romance authors have such a fascination with the supernatural? From his browsing, it was clear that vampires and werewolves were the more popular of the paranormal paramours, but ghosts and zombies had a fair share of stories dedicated to them as well. He took a few of the latter for his collection, and one of each of the former as well, to be fair.   
  
He returned with his sizeable stack to the table he shared with Hanna, where the necromancer was bent over a heavy ancient-looking leather book, his forehead wrinkled in the middle in frustration. He looked up when he noticed his companion, and the expression softened quite a bit.   
  
“Well, looks like you're having better luck than me,” he said, a bit of grouchiness still making his voice a little gruff. A smile wiggled its way up into his eyes though, and he laughed under his breath when he took notice of the zombie's collection. He looked like he was about to reach for one before deciding against it and going back to his own studying with a small, amused shake of his head.   
  
As it turned out, there wasn't much consensus about the undead known as zombies. Like Hanna had said, most adults (which the authors of these books presumably were) did not believe creatures such as him really existed, so even the non-fiction books were mostly speculation and comparison to vaguely similar phenomena. Once you got past the general disbelief though (which was somewhat like the disbelief in ghosts, or in God; a sort of acknowledgment that you didn't personally think they existed but they _might_ and you could certainly at least pretend they did, for the sake of discussion), the fictional books were interesting enough, and at least gave him a decent overview of what zombies were supposed to be like.   
  
Which, as Hanna had told him before, were... rather unlike him. Most of them didn't talk or have any sort of conscious thought (as far as anybody was aware). Even in the most optimistic of the stories, none of the zombies had particularly envious lives. Most were shambling corpses, hardly human at all. Some of them still resembled the people they once were, but that was only proof that they weren't people any longer. The only redemption there seemed to be was in becoming human again, and only in a very small handful of the stories he'd picked out, because only in that small handful were the zombies protagonists. Predictably, they featured as villains most of the time, and not even main antagonists, just hoards of monsters, hardly worth mention, lacking in identity.   
  
That was perhaps the most insulting thing of all. Or not _insulting_ exactly, as things were just what they were and nobody was being purposefully hurtful, but it was... disheartening. Sad, that he should be likened to these two things, but like neither. Not a thoughtless shambler, devoid of all that made him human (he wasn't upset about this, of course), and yet not in any way complete, as were the dead that Hanna had used to raise in his past. (Surprisingly, he was not upset about this either.) Truth be told, he _wasn't_ really upset about _anything._ Not on behalf of himself.   
  
The thing was, well, Hanna. Everything, all his problems and thoughts, came down to how it affected Hanna. It _would_ , of course, Hanna being the only thing he knew, or at least the only thing he _knew_ he knew. The thing was, being a zombie or whatever it was he was, it didn't bother him terribly much. Even the great blankness that was his past was not a big issue. He was getting along fine without it, after all. The only problem was how what he didn't know _could_ hurt him, despite how the saying went, and furthermore how it could hurt others, particularly Hanna.   
  
The other issue was... Being a zombie didn't bother _him_ , but suppose it bothered Hanna? There wasn't much he could do about it, because he was fairly certain he wasn't going to be making a miraculous transformation back into a living breathing person. Suppose that wasn't something Hanna could or wanted to deal with long term?   
  
They hadn't spoken about it yet, but there was the matter of what would happen when this case was over with. More specifically, it was a matter of where the zombie would go. He didn't think he was going to just die again, once it was all over-- he wasn't a ghost, held back from the afterlife by an unfulfilled desire. At least, he didn't think so. He felt quite firmly attached to his body. He was rather sure he was going to stay, and he was rather sure he wanted to stay with Hanna. As far as he could tell, without asking him straight, that was Hanna's idea as well.   
  
But maybe the fact that he was a zombie wouldn't bother Hanna. It hadn't seemed to yet. So far, Hanna was the only one who didn't seem to care in the slightest that he wasn't strictly human-- even the vampire, Conrad, had found him quite weird.   
  
Well, it didn't really matter, he decided, after browsing through one more stack of zombie-related books. Hanna would mind, or he wouldn't, and there wasn't anything _he_ could do about it. But he _could_ just try to be the best _person_ he could, the best friend and such.   
  
To that effect, he returned the paranormal books to their rightful spaces and went to search instead in the general fiction section, and thought perhaps he might venture into 'romance' later, if he was feeling brave. 

 


	5. Loneliness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A quick history of the detective's life and beyond.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this to get past some writer's block, so it's a little rambly and a little different from most of the other fics in this set.   
> Content warning, I guess, for 1800's racial tensions.   
> This chapter contains spoilers for Chapter 10 of "Rogue" (which, at this time, I have not yet posted), but it's mostly stuff that's been implied since the beginning, so I don't think it's too big of a deal.

His earliest memories were of an oppressive loneliness, peeking through the gaps in his well-regimented daily routine. There were so many children, and quite a few adults too-- how could he be lonely when he was never alone? It was something he didn't really understand until he was a bit older, when he realized that every child there was what they called an orphan. Normal children had parents to care for them and love them. Orphans had staff, who either could not or simply did not love them. The staff managed them, and that was going to have to do. And they managed them well enough, with strict schedules and uniforms and classes and chores.   
  
But not having parents was only one reason for the loneliness; he didn't think that was it. Every child there was parent-less but not every child seemed to mind much. His roommates (he might call them friends, but he wasn't sure they would return the sentiment) were more annoyed at their workload, or at their terrible meals, especially the ones who remembered having families. Others complained about their classes, but none of those things bothered him, and he thought eventually that maybe that was another reason he felt lonely.   
  
Another cause was, perhaps, how the staff treated him. His teachers and overseers tended to favor him over the other children, praising his calm, obedient nature and willingness to be helpful, and so they relied on him more heavily than on the others. That sort of preferential treatment should have seemed like a stroke of luck, but without love and in such a structured environment, he just felt like a well-favored servant-- liked, but only for his usefulness. Furthermore, it did little to endear him to his peers, who both envied and hated his pet status.   
  
That didn't mean that his fellow orphans especially disliked him. Instead they treated him more like one of the adults, with a sometimes-grudging respect that, in some cases, had been beaten into them, not by him, but by the actual adults. No, in fact, his preference toward resolving issues in a non-violent manner (while still achieving results) was partly why the overseers assigned him as an aid at such a young age. (This also contributed to his treatment by the other children. An aid was as good as a junior overseer, and just as much a betrayal as if you'd been hired to the job, in the opinions of some of the children.) And it was also probably how he managed to avoid being sent off to a factory job as soon as he turned twelve. He was too useful to the orphanage staff not to keep him around as long as possible.   
  
He stayed in the home long past the age when most of the others had been sent off, to factories, or apprenticeships, or to the military, and he was grateful for the continued support, he supposed. He'd heard of children far younger than him being thrown out on the streets, and it wasn't a fate he envied. Still, the orphanage never stopped feeling lonely, and the time came when he decided it was time to leave. And despite the fact that they did not love him, the staff put up quite a fight when he declared his intentions to join the police force, though they did let him go in the end.   
  
He hadn't left hoping to find some place he could truly think of as home, which was fortunate, as the police barracks were little different from the orphanage, except that they were filled with grown men instead of children. He did at least start feeling like he had some control over his life, which alleviated the loneliness somewhat. Helping people, or at least training to do so, gave him a sense of purpose.   
  
By the time he graduated from training and started to receive his patrol routes, he had earned the respect of many others in the force, but was not especially close to any of them. They were plenty friendly with him, but it still seemed shallow, and he couldn't help but wonder, just the littlest bit, if maybe this was just the depth of human connection after all. Though even as he thought it, he knew it wasn't true. There was something more to life and to relationships than simple cordiality.   
  
It wasn't long before he was earning enough to afford an apartment across town, and he didn't think any of his barracks-mates probably missed him all that much when he moved.   
  
Years went by and he was comfortable, if still occasionally bothered by that persistent feeling he'd had so long. He was promoted from beat-cop to detective (although it was more of a part-time deal, based on the availability of cases; he still ran patrols when they needed him to, or when he needed to), and he did his best to serve and protect the people of the city, an experience which was often gratifying and sometimes gave him glimpses of that illusive whatever-it-was, that anti-loneliness. He felt it particularly strong one evening when he responded to a fight near the slums, where some immigrants were being harassed by a drunk.   
  
“Get out of here!” the man was yelling. “Go back where you came from!” He threw some slurs out at them along with the rest of his slurred insults.   
  
The small group of immigrants was yelling back at him as they easily avoided the rocks he was throwing in their direction. The detective wasn't familiar with the language, but he assumed it was Chinese. He approached them, standing as straight as possible and hoping to look official enough to scare the drunkard off before he decided he wanted a real fight.   
  
“What's the problem here?” he asked, putting himself between the two sides and facing the one he thought more likely to resort to violence.   
  
The angry drunk man continued his tirade, just changing tenses and pronouns so he could tell it as a story to the officer, who he clearly hoped would be sympathetic to his racist plight. Behind the detective, the immigrants were, presumably, telling their side of the story.   
  
“I'm sorry, I don't understand,” he said over his shoulder. “Does any of you speak any English?”   
  
“This angry man won't leave us alone!” one young woman, maybe a few years younger than him, said. “He keep yelling and follow us and throwing stones!”   
  
That was all he needed to know. He nudged the young woman back behind him and addressed the drunk, face set and hand resting on his holstered pistol. “Sir, I have to ask you to leave,” he said to the man, who seemed to take a minute to digest what he'd heard, before he scoffed and wandered off, muttering under his breath as he went.   
  
“Thank you,” the young woman said, sighing deeply. “It is good to have one of us with the police. The others, they would try to arrest _us_ , probably.”   
  
It felt to him as if the woman was confusing him with someone else. “I'm sorry, I'm not sure what you mean.”   
  
The young woman's mother, or perhaps grandmother, and several of the others in the small group, were still talking at him, as if they observed no barriers in the communication. “Grandma says you must have friends in high places,” the young woman told him. “For you to get that badge! She says you should have dinner with us.”   
  
Although he didn't want to impose on their hospitality, least of all because he did not particularly need it, he decided to walk them home. That he stayed for supper was due to his incredulity of the young woman's translations of Grandma's pleasant chattering.   
  
“I hadn't thought about it,” he told them, when Grandma finally insisted that he was Chinese, or at least partly. (The younger members of the family laughed and waved off Grandma's certainty, telling her that she couldn't just tell a stranger what he was or wasn't, as much as they all agreed with her.) There was no way to know for sure, since he had been anonymously donated to the orphanage at so young an age he couldn't possibly recall, but it did make some sense the more he considered it.   
  
He didn't stay for as long as he'd have liked, as he had a patrol to resume, and he didn't meet with the family again after that, but it remained an important moment in his mind, one of the first times he felt really accepted, rather than simply respected.   
  
After that, he factored this new piece of information, this potential ethnicity, into his interactions with others and found that he understood with better clarity some of the nuance of situations he found himself in. There was a lot of tension between different factions of immigrants and those who considered themselves natives, and though it seemed nobody was any more sure of his race than he was (aside from Grandma) and never called him by any of the racist names they flung so casually at and about people who were more clearly Chinese, it was probable that even appearing as though he _might_ be of Asian descent was enough to raise a semi-opaque concern in the back of some minds. However, this knowledge had little positive or negative effect on his life, so he did not dwell on it. After all, he figured, people were going to treat him however they were going to treat him, and his own perception of himself would not change theirs.   
  
This was true of not only his race, but also his profession. The more he worked as an officer (or as a detective, depending on the day), the more he saw that the police force was not widely trusted by the less-fortunate citizens. Although he felt that he was a good, well-intentioned person who strove to help others when possible, he could not escape the common notion that men of his profession were corrupt and disinterested in the problems of the poor. Often, he spent more time convincing the victim of a crime to let him help than he spent solving the issue, and returned to find them shocked that he had followed up on the offer. Sometimes, even retrieving stolen goods was not enough to gain their trust; they never stopped assuming he had an ulterior motive.   
  
Such would be the case again, he expected, when he went to track down a witch to help him solve a particularly frightening series of recent murders. He'd heard the name Hanna Cross, barely more than a whisper, from another officer, or a courier, or someone, he didn't quite remember. Hanna, he heard, could speak with the dead, and solved more mysteries than the entire police force combined. So it seemed to him that finding her was the wisest course of action, despite his reluctance to meddle in something like magic. Of course, misgendering someone was not the surest way to make them trust you.   
  
As it turned out, Hanna was a boy, or perhaps a young man, and nothing like the imposing, cloaked, shadow-wrapped figure he had been expecting. There was almost nothing dark about him, aside from the underside of his eyes and his displeased scowl. His clothes were the standard color of those living in the city-- brown and what might have been white at some point, somewhat worn and dirty but certainly not yet black. His hair was a mess of red curls and his eyes were the sort of blue one rarely saw inside the city limits. It was fairly obvious he was Irish, despite the lack of accent, and the detective spared a thought to hope that Hanna wouldn't refuse to help him on the basis of their respective ethnicities.   
  
But it wasn't ethnicity that made Hanna distrust him-- it was his job. It took a pleaing appeal to Hanna's better nature to convince him to work with the detective. And even then, it seemed that the magic-user was bound to be wary for the entirety of their cooperation. It wasn't something the detective could blame him for; magic was technically illegal, so Hanna had more reason than anyone to be on edge, but still the detective felt he would have liked the young man to give him the benefit of the doubt, as much as he expected that would never be the case.   
  
Somehow, though, by the end of the evening, everything had changed. His world had been slowly turned upside down as he watched Hanna work his magic and did his best to assist, as they traced a pack of shapeshifters to the edges of the slums and nearly met their end at several deadly pairs of claws and teeth. Somehow, the case worked out, and the detective's view of the world was drastically widened, and Hanna, it seemed, didn't hate him after all. That shift in attitude was the strangest of all the things he saw that day. By the time he returned the next morning, to discuss the necromancer's payment, Hanna had clearly recategorized him from someone not to be trusted, to... something else entirely. The detective supposed that facing down death together was bound to have that effect.   
  
He continued requesting Hanna's help on cases, not because he couldn't handle them on his own but because he felt inexplicably happy when Hanna was around. It wasn't the same feeling he got from a job well done, or from helping people, and it wasn't how he felt about even his favorite co-workers or the few people he still kept in touch with from the orphanage. If he could compare how he felt around Hanna to anything he'd ever experienced before, he would say it was like how he felt when he'd thought about his dreams as a child.   
  
Before too long, Hanna's home became his home. At first it was in a metaphorical sense, in that home was supposed to be where you were most comfortable. Though he'd had his apartment room for several years, it had never felt like anything more than the place where he slept. There'd never been any place that felt more than that, not since he could remember, until Hanna magicked the detective's signature or what-have-you into the rune that kept the door locked, which was as good as (or better than) giving him a key. Still he didn't sleep there but on the rare occasion-- it wasn't his house, after all-- but it was his home.   
  
'Home is where the heart is,' was the saying.   
  
It had been clear to him for quite some time, since not too long after they had become familiar with each other, that he loved Hanna dearly. Despite his lack of experience with the emotion, it did not take him long to understand. When you care for someone perhaps more than you care for yourself, when you want to spend your every waking moment in their presence, when they are your first and last thought in any situation, what else can you call it but love? The feeling became intrinsic to his every interaction with the energetic magic-user, and he was glad for it.   
  
Hanna, however, did not seem quite so sure. The detective realized that Hanna loved him, perhaps as strongly as _he_ felt for Hanna, but it was years before the young man understood his own feelings, or was comfortable enough with them, to act on the matter. And then, _then_ , his home became his house as well.   
  
That night was the substance of dreams, if only because he could finally be sure, without a shadow of doubt, that he had found someone to fill the empty parts of him he'd had since he could remember. They weren't even empty anymore-- they'd been filling up steadily over the years with memories and emotions, only now he could name them all. Adoration, devotion, concern, desire, and of course love: all things he felt for Hanna, which took the place of that once-aching loneliness, imparted through gentle touches and warm embraces.   
  
The night, the moment, ended, as nights and moments will, but the emotion of it and of the years preceding it had become a fixture in his very being, so much so that nothing could remove them. They were strong, from bearing the weight of that loneliness as they overcame it.   
  
Even death proved no match for the bond he had formed with Hanna, or the way it had changed him for the better. There was a moment of fear when he faced it, intense and paralyzing, but the fear was not for him; he could die happy in the knowledge that he had done his best and that he had found love in the end. The fear was for Hanna, who had always been lonely too, and the thought that it would come rushing back to him when the detective was no longer there to keep it back. The fear was just a slight regret that he hadn't made it _more_ clear that he would never forget Hanna, even if death forced them to part, a regret that he couldn't find just one last breath to tell him now.   
  
But really, truly, death was powerless in the face of any emotion as strong as the one he held. He slept in the cold embrace of oblivion for several lifetimes, and when he woke he found that it had erased all the words from his mind, all the pictures, and all the sounds, the colors, the smells, but not the way he felt.   
  
“I came to you for a reason,” he said to the magic-user and his mess of red curls and his eternal blue eyes. He didn't know why, but he _felt_ why. He didn't know himself, but he felt Hanna. He didn't know much of anything, but it didn't bother him because he felt he understood what was important: destroying the loneliness that plagued this young man, filling in the cracks that were left with this warmth he'd been reborn with, and then guarding Hanna until he could make it such a part of himself that not even death could threaten it.   
  


 


	6. Confessional

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the Detective visits a priest. 
> 
> This chapter takes place any time during/around chapter 10.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As you might imagine, this one has a lot of talk about Christianity, which might comes across as either preachy or vaguely heretical, depending on which side of the coin you fall with regards to the religion. ^^;

At first, Father Henry did not see him, sitting there in the back row by the door. The man had a somewhat neutral presence, especially as compared to his bright young partner who, Henry realized, was not with him. The detective's lone appearance caused an uneasiness in the priest, as he remembered speaking with Hanna some months earlier about how _good_ the man was, how morally upstanding. The two of them had never spoken, but from what he understood (based on Hanna's glowing praise and what he heard from others around the town), this detective was a lawful and righteous fellow, exactly the sort of man any priest ought to welcome to his congregation.   
  
Quite unfortunately for Henry, this upstanding Christian lawman also knew a secret for which he could quite easily have him arrested.   
  
Still, regardless of the tense rhythm building in his chest, the priest approached the man, calmly and with a welcoming heart. Any who sat in these pews were to be treated as the innocent children of God, and if they were lost, then he was to lead them. He bade himself disregard any potential lawsuits and attend to his calling.   
  
When he neared, the detective looked up at him as if he'd not previously noticed him. “Father,” he said in greeting, tone simple, neither expectant nor threatening.   
  
“Detective,” Henry replied with a deep nod. “I am surprised to see you here without our mutual acquaintance.”   
  
The man shook his head shortly. “I realized my presence was unwelcome during your dealings with Hanna. It isn't my place to interfere, so you need not fear my involvement.”   
  
Henry breathed easier to hear that, as it seemed an honest statement. But it caused him to wonder what other reason the man might have for coming. The priest recognized, from years of experience, that the detective was here to talk and not simply to reflect on his personal relationship with God.   
  
“Then have you another cause to be here?” he asked. “Is something bothering you?”   
  
The man thought on the question for a moment. “I wouldn't say _bothering._ I suppose I'm just... thinking. You've known Hanna for quite some years, haven't you?”   
  
“Yes I have,” Henry responded, smiling a bit as he remembered his first meeting with the young man. Sixteen years old, by his word, and lauded as a lifesaver by the city's neediest. He'd been expecting some shadowy or imposing figure, but the black magic he hired to keep his people safe came from the small, pale hands of a peculiar red-headed runt. He couldn't get Hanna to come to mass, so the two of them didn't talk as much as they might, but Henry felt he knew the boy well enough, and maybe better than most folks due to what he gleaned from their professional dealings.   
  
“What do you think of his magic?”   
  
That wasn't an easy question to answer completely, because it was a complicated situation and he was in a precarious position, but it wasn't hard to articulate his opinion on the matter. “I think it's useful. I think half of my congregation would have died that winter, had Hanna not come along.”   
  
The detective nodded. “I remember, a sickness was going around the city. But that isn't what I mean.”   
  
Of course it wasn't, Henry thought. This was a church and he was the priest; the man wanted to know his thoughts as a man of God. “I think...” he began. “I think that God doesn't make mistakes. But I am also quite sure that the words written in the Bible are true.”   
  
“Then you think that God allowed Hanna access to evil magics on purpose?” He raised an eyebrow at Henry, and the priest nodded, conceding that it didn't sound especially good when phrased like that.   
  
“Yes,” he said, drawing out the word, “but not specifically more than He _allows_ any of us to sin. We all have our free will, but sin is in our nature. More in some of us than others, I suppose. What I mean is that I believe God created Hanna and put him on his path so that he would be where he needed to be and, furthermore, where he was needed.”   
  
At that, the detective looked rather sad, and Henry just resisted setting a hand on his arm. “So then...” He paused and seemed to think over the situation for a moment. “Then you believe Hanna's existence is less about his own life than it is about the lives of others? You think God wrote him off as lost from the very beginning?”   
  
Henry shook his head. “No, I didn't say that. Every man's life is his own, and even if Hanna is covered in sin, I don't believe it means he is without hope for salvation.”   
  
“I see,” the detective said, the sad look in his eyes turning inward while he apparently thought about Henry's words.   
  
The situation _was_ rather sad, the priest thought, even though he did fully believe Hanna could be saved. It was sad that anyone was ever born in circumstances that might encourage them to sin, or even to necessitate it. Henry was enough a realist to understand that living in a godly fashion meant little if you could not survive long enough for those actions to bear fruit. Hanna had never outright said so, but it was clear that his use of black magic was something of a survival technique.   
  
He felt that the detective was ready to speak before the man even opened his mouth, but he wasn't entirely prepared for the depth of emotion he heard in the words. “I worry about him,” he said softly. His head was bent, eyes cast down at the hands folded loosely between his knees. “I wonder if it's alright to allow him to continue this way... not as a Christian, but as someone who cares about him.”   
  
Henry looked at the detective, at Hanna's 'friend', his _partner_. He wasn't sure exactly what their relationship was, but he could tell that this man was loyal to Hanna. “May I ask your name, if you don't mind?”   
  
The detective considered him (or perhaps considered himself) for a moment, before he said, “Christopher.”   
  
Onomastic etymology had always been an interest of his, and he was often pleased to find that peoples' names were more than just the words used to refer to them. “That means 'he who carries Christ',” he told him. Christopher did not seem especially impressed, but perhaps he simply wasn't as interested in name meanings as he was in his question of Hanna's morality. However, Henry felt they had some relevance. Hanna ('Grace of God') had the rather straightforward surname of Cross, and Henry couldn't help but think it fitting that the magic user had come to be so close to the detective. As he'd said, he felt that God didn't make mistakes, and that they were all there for a reason.   
  
Christopher was waiting for a relevant answer, so Henry tried to give it to him. “Though it may inconvenience me to lose his services, I do think you're right to wonder at the choice for him to continue. God may have set Hanna on this path, but I don't think that necessarily means he intended him to stay on it. I do think, however, that he intended the two of you to meet, 'he who carries Christ the Cross-Bearer'.”   
  
“You think my purpose is to save Hanna?” Christopher asked, his brow wrinkled but more in determination than disgust or any of the sort of emotions one might expect. Implying that God had specific expectations of individuals did not always go over well.   
  
“People never have just one purpose,” Henry replied. “But it's not strange to think your paths crossed for a reason, is it?”   
  
The detective smiled a little, as if disbelieving. “I came to him, originally, for help on a case. I never thought there would be something I needed to do for him, though I would be glad to.”   
  
“Oh help need not be felt in only one direction,” the priest said, gesturing vaguely. “Helping others is the surest way to _be_ helped. And purpose is much the same. I think, as human beings, we may all be each-others' purpose, in a way.”   
  
“I think I understand,” Christopher said, nodding, though he still seemed concerned. (Maybe this was just his usual expression, Henry thought.)   
  
Henry stood straighter and put his hands behind his back as the detective also sat up from his contemplative hunch. “Well then,” he said. “I'm glad I could be of some use.” They stood and sat there for a few moments, Christopher lost again in his own deep thoughts, it seemed, and Henry admiring the shine of the dust motes dancing in the beam of light reaching down from the highest window. Then another thought came to him, a question. “Do you think you will convince him to stop?”   
  
“If I am able,” the detective answered. “I'll do what I can, but Hanna is stubborn. He has to want it for himself.”   
  
The man was underestimating his own ability to influence Hanna, Henry thought, remembering the bright energy and pride in the boy's voice whenever he spoke of his partner, as if the man's accomplishments were his own. “Let him know that it is important to you,” he told Christopher, standing back to make room for the man to exit the pew. “I have a feeling that he'll listen.”   
  
“I hope so,” the detective said, reaching out to shake the priest's hand. “Thank you for the advice.”   
  
“It's what I am here for,” Henry said, glad to have helped.   
  
A small amused smile came to the corner of the detective's lips. “I thought you were here to promote the word of God?”   
  
“Oh there are plenty of ways to do God's work,” he told the man. “And not all of it requires a sermon. Don't think he won't be pleased to have you looking out for our young friend. After all, he is one of God's children too. He may well be more important than we know.”   
  
And all guesses of divine possibility aside, Henry knew that Hanna was already immensely important to those whose lives he had affected. That the detective had come here today was proof enough. He didn't know what would come of Hanna in the future (or of his partner, or of whatever was between them), but he felt certain, as if God were telling it straight to him, that the young man's doings would have more than just a passing effect. 

 


	7. Familiar

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which some cats decide they like Hanna.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not quite done with the next main chapter, but have a side-story in the meantime.   
> Also, I'm still taking suggestions, if anyone's got one.

Moving from the country into the city was a bit of a culture shock to Hanna. The smells (much less pleasant), the colors (far more drab), even the temperatures (both hotter and colder) were different from what he was used to. And the people, of course, were the most different of all. Folks in the city tended to be like the temperatures-- extreme on any side and hard to ignore. Often he dealt with people who were very rude, who almost seemed to go out of their way to be impolite. But then sometimes he met others who were surprisingly nice and helpful, although it was usually because they were trying to sell you something. Either way, they were all loud or in other ways difficult not to see, and they were everywhere. In the country, it was not hard to get away from folks and be by yourself for a while. In the city, even the sanctity of your very own apartment was only a few yards away from your nearest neighbor.   
  
But this was all expected, to a certain degree.   
  
Something Hanna had not expected was that, like humans, animals were similarly commonplace in the dark and dreary city. There were animals on every corner, in every alley, lounging on rooftops and lying in gutters. And not just birds, who could and would go anywhere, but goats and chickens, and even dogs and cats. They seemed to think the city belonged to them, much the same as the humans who shared it with them, and they roamed around like there was no difference in their species.   
  
Growing up in the country, Hanna had had a particular sort of relationship with animals that was a little at-odds with how people treated them in the city. There'd been plenty of animals around, of course; more animals than humans, most of the time. But they _were_ animals, and country-folk didn't forget that. They lived in the fields, the forests, the barns, and the gardens; the places were humans _didn't_ live. But he'd never had a 'pet', not unless you counted reptiles and insects he caught in jars.   
  
Yet it was not uncommon, here in his new home, for people to keep animals inside their houses and treat them almost as if they were another member of the family. It was strange. He didn't dislike it, but it was different from what he'd been used to.   
  
Of course, he hadn't had the space for a pet when he was working for the butcher and just renting a bed. He'd barely had the space for his growing collection of ingredients, jammed under the bed frame with the rest of the personal things he'd managed to acquire. If he'd brought an animal into the house, his roommates might have slaughtered him and sold his carcass to the butcher. (The man wasn't especially more crooked than anyone else in the city, but his relative honesty probably wouldn't have stopped him from selling human flesh as dog food, at least.) That being the case, he didn't even consider adopting a pet.   
  
Once he'd become financially stable enough to afford his own place (a blessing from on high, it was so much better than sharing a tiny room with five other men), he didn't bother to reanalyze his stance on animal-ownership. He liked animals, sure, but he didn't really care one way or the other about having them in the house. Yes, sometimes he was a bit... lonely, and maybe having another living creature around would be nice (one who wouldn't probably turn you into the police for witchcraft or steal all your things when you weren't looking, anyway), but he was getting rather busy with work lately, and you had to feed pets, didn't you? And how would one go about _getting_ a pet anyway? You couldn't just go and scoop a nice-looking one up off the street, he was fairly certain. So, he didn't bother.   
  
But not more than two months after he'd moved into his new apartment, the decision was rather forced upon him.   
  
He'd been out late at night, doing a fairly standard resurrection (which had gone well, thank you), and was on his way home when he tripped over a cat. Technically speaking, it wasn't the cat he'd tripped over-- it was an uneven piece of road that caught his foot when the cat appeared in front of him and he'd stumbled trying _not_ to trip over it.   
  
“Augh, damn,” he groaned, as he picked himself up off the paving stones. He wiped the tiny pebbles out of the scrapes in his palms, and then looked around for the cat, on one hand hoping he hadn't kicked it, and on the other hand hoping he had. But the black-and-white cat was nowhere to be found, so he shrugged and continued on his way.   
  
Another block down the road, it happened again. “You stupid cat!” he yelled, mourning the new cut in the knee of his pants. “What is wrong with you?!” He hadn't gotten a very good look at the animal, but he had a feeling it was the same one, and he had a feeling that it was messing with him on purpose. It almost got him a third time, but he was vigilant after being fooled twice, and managed to stop just short of the animal, who was looking both smug and disappointed, if that was possible.   
  
“You're going to have to try harder than that,” he said to it, as it turned away from him and began to clean itself.   
  
It _did_ try harder-- or rather, “they”. After another few blocks (during which Hanna walked with his eyes trained on the ground directly in front of him) he realized that it was _two_ cats who were darting in and out of the shadows at the corners of his vision. First, one with white paws and tail-tip would appear almost right under his feet and force Hanna into an impromptu dance to get away from it. Then, one with a white patch around its eye would headbutt the back of his legs while he was looking around for its friend. The first would stare out at him from under the eave of a nearby roof, while the second disappeared from view around a corner. One under a parked carriage, the other on a windowsill. In a gutter one moment, in a tree the next. As if they knew his final destination, they led him all the way home.   
  
And then, finally, they stood there in front of the steps of his apartment, waiting. He was certain they would disappear if he looked away. To test his theory, he did just that, but they were right where he'd seen the last when he returned his gaze. They didn't run as he approached, much to his surprise, and they did not feign disinterest by turning away or pretending to clean themselves.   
  
“What is it you want?” he asked, after he'd come within several feet of them. They didn't answer, of course, not in words, but they gave him a long look and turned heel, almost in sync with each other, and climbed the steps toward the front door.   
  
“I didn't invite you in,” Hanna said, but the two cats didn't seem to care. He opened the door to let himself into the building, and they came right along, following him up the flights of stairs to his landing and waiting (not quite patiently) for him to open the next door. He frowned at them and nudged them away with his foot, cracking the door open and sliding inside so that they couldn't follow. It made him feel a little foolish, but no more than they'd made him feel the past twenty minutes.   
  
Once inside, he latched the door (even though it was not strictly necessary anymore, with the runework he'd done on the handle), hung up his coat, and shuffled off towards his bed. A few steps in, he tripped-- over a black cat with a white spot around its eye. Its white-footed friend was already on the bed, having happily claimed Hanna's single pillow for its own.   
  
At this point, Hanna had to admit a few things.   
  
One: these were probably not normal cats. True, he didn't know many felines, but to the best of his knowledge, none of the others he'd met were quite this sneaky. The front door was still closed, as was the window. There was no other way to get inside, and yet, here they were.   
  
Two: these cats wanted to be here. Maybe they saw something in him, or maybe they just liked his house, or perhaps they were little trickster saboteurs sent by another mage to ruin the competition. But whatever the case, they clearly weren't going to leave him alone.   
  
Three: at least for the time being, it seemed the decision about pets had been made for him.   
  
Shaking his head at the absurdity of the situation, Hanna nudged one cat out of the way and then tipped the other off his pillow. “Fine,” he said. “Stay if you want. Just let me sleep, alright?”   
  
And they did.   
  
When he woke in the morning, he had a very strange sensation of being gently smothered. It was confusing until he realized it was fur covering his face. Hanna opened his eyes and pushed the cat away, for what little good it did. It deigned to move about an inch and no further, becoming stubbornly resistant to any further shoving. The other one was not far away; though less obvious than the first, it was not exactly subtle in its cuddling either, curled up against the small of Hanna's back.   
  
Trying not to crush them (but not trying _too_ hard; they were invading _his_ home, after all), Hanna removed himself from his bed and went about his morning routine. He half expected them to impede him at every step, but they seemed content to lounge about for the most part. They did come investigate sometimes when he was dealing with food or spell ingredients, but otherwise they left him alone.   
  
But not _alone_ alone. They hung around the entire day, and though they didn't interact with him all that often, they still provided the apartment with a feeling of fullness that it had been lacking. And it was... nice.   
  
This went on for quite some time. Actually, it never really stopped. As much as he'd been expecting that they might just go away at some point (and certainly he never stopped them from leaving; they came and went as they pleased), they never left for good nor, indeed, for very long at all. It took a few weeks before Hanna decided he might as well assume proper ownership of them, for what it was worth. He began feeding them regularly (or at least, sort of; they didn't seem to need it, apparently capable of feeding themselves), and finally gave them names: Sith to the white-paw cat (after the legendary Celtic trickster, Cait Sith), and Sabo for the eye-spot cat (short for Saboteur). They even seemed to like the names, as much as cats ever liked anything. They responded to them, at least.   
  
It wasn't until much later that he heard the term 'familiar' and realized that it might apply to these two ridiculous pets of his, but it made quite a lot of sense. They didn't exactly help him with his magic, as the stories of familiar-animals suggested, but they appeared to like the magic, and usually came around to watch whenever he set to casting a spell. And maybe their presence didn't specifically keep him focused, but it was nice to have them around, and that disruption of loneliness had sort of a similar effect, he thought. And sure, they didn't quite speak to him in anything resembling human words, but he felt he could understand them (and they him) sometimes more than he could understand other people.   
  
All-in-all, it was a pleasant and beneficial relationship they had, which he figured was the real point behind the concept of familiars. (The whole talking-cat helping a witch with her spells thing was pretty far-fetched in his opinion, and probably just another example of stories of magic being exaggerated to throw people off of magic-users' trails.)   
  
Despite what he'd thought before about pets (that he didn't care for them one way or the other), before long it was clear that he had become, through no fault of his own, truly, a cat person. In fact, the more he dealt with humans, the more of a cat person he was willing to admit he was. People, in general, were terribly annoying, and at times he wished he could cut them out of his life entirely and simply deal with cats. (Not that they were perfect either.)   
  
Case in point: the morning after an extremely long work-night, when he stumbled home and to his bed only to hear a hurried knock upon his door just as he was falling to sleep.   
  
“Is anyone home?” the voice asked. “Please, I must speak with Hanna Cross.”   
  
“Ugh,” Hanna groaned, dragging himself out of bed to answer the door. He just wanted to go to sleep and bury himself under his blankets and cats, but _no_ , there were _people_ to deal with, and his damn cats (he loved them, but they were so useless sometimes) refused to make the man go away (which was something he knew they were capable of doing; they'd done it before, appearing in the hallway and distracting the unwanted solicitor, or hissing until the person finally left).   
  
But when he returned that evening, after agreeing to help the man, Sith and Sabo were simply glowing with self-satisfaction. Their smugness annoyed Hanna for barely half a day before he realized that maybe they had a point. The detective he'd worked with the previous day returned for breakfast and stayed for lunch, by which point the three of them had become entirely enamored with the man. When he declared that he ought to head home, far before they'd had their fill of him, the cats refused to get out of his lap, and the man was far too polite to force them, so he stayed for another hour. Hanna silently promised to give the little tricksters as much cream as they wanted.   
  
And it continued this way for quite some time. In fact, it never really stopped.   
  
“What would I do if I'd never met you two?” Hanna asked them one day.   
  
They didn't really respond, not in words or any such thing, but the answer was clear: that was never really an option. 

 


	8. Reaper

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the reaper acquires his assistant.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ultimately, I was unable to resist writing about Ples and Veser. Chronologically, this chapter takes place probably before Chapter 1, but it isn't relevant until Chapter 5 or later. It may be particularly relevant to Chapter 13 (aka, The Last Chapter, which I have not yet posed).

Ples Tibenoch led what many would consider a lonely life, although even he was not sure if that had anything to do with his being a reaper, or if it was simply a product of his personality. He'd only met one other of his kind before, and he'd been a similar man, but... there were a lot of reasons why that could have been. It did him no good guessing.  
  
On the other hand, his acquaintance Hanna Cross had met a good few reapers, and he claimed they all tended to be a lot like Ples, except more taciturn. Ples wasn't sure what to think about that. _More_ taciturn? That seemed unlikely, given how others had always described him back... well, back then. And nobody much described him anymore, at least not to his face, but he did do a lot of observing, and if he compared himself to others he observed, then he was still fairly taciturn.  
  
Honestly though, it was possible that he had changed. And, if so, it was likely because of his association with Hanna. Typically, Ples did not like necromancers. He couldn't say whether or not he approved of them on a personal level, but they were definitely a nuisance to him professionally. The souls of the dead ought to stay _where he put them_ , and they generally _did_ , except when necromancers came around. The fiendish mages were always summoning them back, ruining Ples's hard work and making him have to chase after them. It was very inconvenient. And that was not mentioning their dangerous ability to call and trap him. It was never more than a temporary experience, but it was terribly uncomfortable, being forced to work with the entitled magic-users and unable to follow the incessant keening whine of the souls that needed to be dealt with. Also they were usually rude and smelled horrible.  
  
Hanna did fit most of these descriptions, technically, but he was, by far, the best necromancer to work with, Ples would say if pressed to choose. Although his smell was possibly worse than the others Ples had encountered, he was really only 'rude' in that it was definitely not polite to summon someone out of what they'd been doing just because you needed help. Otherwise, he was a friendly sort, rather cheerful. Some of the cheer was fake, but Ples found that he appreciated the effort none-the-less.  
  
To be perfectly honest, he had not really understood that he was lonely until he met Hanna. Even then, it was not something that clicked. It was just that he found he preferred Hanna over others he had to deal with, and if it was possible he tried to be there when the young man needed his help, and he didn't mind sticking around a few minutes to chat after their work was done, even if it meant he had to endure the crying of distant souls he needed to take. He didn't think to give a name to this relationship, but after Hanna retired from the business and Ples no longer had any reason to see him, he _realized_ he was lonely, and he realized that he had considered Hanna... a friend.  
  
He casually puzzled over this for a few decades. A friend. That was something he'd hardly had _back then_ , let alone as a supernatural entity. There really were very few people to talk to. To a degree, he could traverse the human plane and communicate with mortals, but it was difficult to get them to remember him when they turned away. (It made ordering drinks an ordeal.) And he wasn't sure he wanted to be remembered anyway. _That_ , he was almost sure, was part of his reaper essence. It seemed that, maybe, they weren't _meant_ to befriend mortals.  
  
But... it didn't stop him from trying, at least a little.  
  
The people he spoke with the most still tended to be necromancers. They were fewer and farther-between these days, as the use of magic seemed to have dwindled with the advancement of technology, but they did still exist. Most were still as nefarious as ever, so Ples did not bother with them much. He struck up a tenuous working relationship with a few, but it was never anything like it had been with Hanna. He wondered if he might ever see him again, but rather hoped he didn't, for the necromancer's own sake.  
  
Other than the disgusting black-magic users, he did find that there were other supernaturals around that he could sometimes speak with. Vampires were fairly common these days, functioning almost like mortals, but with the ability to remember him from encounter to encounter, and a rather enticing smell. They weren't always the easiest to get along with, but the sort of vague antagonism he got from them was still entertaining, and they seemed to feel the same. They were essentially opposites in nature, reapers being very orderly and vampires being so chaotic. Still, he followed after a pair of them for a while in the mid 1900's, and it was an experience, to say the least.  
  
Still, friendship was, at most, a secondary concern of his. The majority of his time and efforts were still spent on his job: taking the souls of the dead. It was a little hard to really call it a job, since it didn't pay-- more of a lifestyle, Ples supposed. What it really _was_ was a compulsion, an intrinsic need based on a strange sixth sense. (Or even perhaps a seventh one by this point.) Dead and dying souls called to him. More accurately, probably, they called _out_ , to anyone, but only reapers could hear. He could leave them alone for any length of time, and he'd done so before, just to see what happened, but the noise just piled up upon itself into a maddening screech until the souls were dealt with. For that reason, he tended to be quick about it.  
  
It was not only the dead and dying he could hear; occasionally, a lively soul would speak up. They didn't whine the same way the others did. Instead they sounded like a steady whispering sigh, a noise that would be easy to ignore if it weren't so distinctly different. They were quite rare to hear, so Ples always investigated them, if for no other reason than his own curiosity, but most of the time there was nothing he could do. They were living souls, regular mortals; he couldn't give them what they wanted.  
  
This time, though-- the year two-thousand-and-something, in a dreary North American city he'd found himself gravitating towards lately-- when he listened close, he found that the sigh became faint words.  
  
“Please...” they whispered, ghostly notes tracing along all his senses. “I'll do anything...”  
  
He followed the words, more maddening and enticing than any number of crying souls, and they led him to a house in the suburbs. Among its neighbors, it was the only one that was dark. Surrounded by homes with brightly-lit windows and full of families joining together for dinner, this house was starkly lonely and empty, but for one young man.  
  
Ples let himself in, materializing in a corner of the boy's room. It was dark in here, only the street lamp outside giving any light, and the whisperer was sitting at a desk on the other side of the room, his head pillowed on his arms and his eyes closed. Ples could hear his soft prayers double-time now, both falling from his lips and from his longing soul.  
  
“Please, help Lee,” he was saying. “Please. Please.”  
  
Unsure quite how to respond, Ples simply increased his presence and allowed himself to be noticed. The whisperer halted his whispering and turned around sharply.  
  
“You're--...” he said, looking Ples up and down with his wide reflective green eyes.  
  
“Not God, if that was what you were thinking,” Ples replied, taking a step closer out of the shadows.  
  
“Then...?”  
  
Rarely did Ples ever have to explain himself. Souls demanded no explanation when they were being taken, and most humans tended to assume he was no different from them. “A 'grim' reaper, I suppose,” he said, smirking a bit at his own description; he'd always been sort of amused by the common depiction of his kind.  
  
The young man nodded, standing and taking a step closer. “You heard me,” he assumed. “So that means... you can help me?”  
  
“It is possible,” Ples said, though he doubted that it was probable. “What troubles you?”  
  
“It's, uh...” The young man appeared lost for words, as if he'd practiced it all in his head a million times but lost track of the speech when he needed it most. In fact, he looked lost in general. He took a deep breath, trying to figure out how to explain. “It's my uncle. He... died, recently. But now, I keep seeing his ghost.”  
  
Very rarely did Ples deal with ghosts. They didn't call out like the other dead souls did, so he had no reason to go to them. Most commonly it was necromancers who summoned him to dispose of the spirit once they had captured it. “You wish for me to send him on?” he guessed.  
  
“What?! Jeezus, no!” The young man's bright green eyes widened. “God, if that's all you're gonna do, then I don't want your help.”  
  
Ples was rather taken aback by the young man's outburst. He'd only assumed based on his limited experience with situations like this. “Go on, then,” he said.  
  
The frantic light in the young man's eyes died down and was replaced by a more resolute sort of look. Even so, his words didn't sound as steady as he probably would have liked them to be. “I... want you to bring him back. Put him back in his body. He wasn't ready to die! Everyone thought it was a suicide but, his ghost-- I know it wasn't! Please, bring him back to life.”  
  
The boy wanted his uncle brought _back to life_? “That's unheard of,” Ples said, a little coldly perhaps because it seemed so far outside the realm of what was done that it had to be either impossible or illegal (as much as anything was 'legal' in dealing with spirits; but there _was_ a set of rules, and he didn't think this fell within them). Certainly, he'd never heard of another reaper doing such a thing. Then again, he didn't hear very much about what other reapers were doing, so perhaps this was something that happened all the time and was simply unbeknownst to him.  
  
“You have to!” the young man plead, taking Ples' lack of acquiescence as a refusal. He fell to his knees and stopped just short of grabbing on to the reaper's pant legs. “Please, you have to! Kill me instead! I don't even care! Just bring him back!”  
  
Ples had to stop himself from taking a step back; he thought the distraught teenager might just back him into the corner anyway. “No, no,” he said. “It doesn't work that way. We don't kill.” Even the thought was a little nauseating to him. Taking a living human life? No, living mortal souls had an entirely different feel to them and what would he do with one besides?  
  
“Then, I'll- I'll work for you! I'll do anything! Whatever it's worth to you, I'll pay you back.”  
  
Now that the young man was sitting in the light from the street lamp, Ples could see him more clearly. Aside from his iridescent green eyes, he also had a set of oddly pointy teeth, as if perhaps he was not entirely human after all. The thought prompted Ples to look into his soul-- something he normally did from the start.  
  
_Veser Amaker Hatch-- human father; bipolar; abusive-- Selkie mother; distant; cold; strange-- bad family life; awkward childhood; few school friends-- 'uncle' Lee Falun; supportive; caring; “but he's gone; gone; have to bring him back!; please!; i'll do anything!”_  
  
So Veser _wasn't_ human, it seemed. Ples had never met a selkie before, but he could read in Veser's soul that they were capable of several sorts of magic. He thought perhaps that was why he could hear the young man's whispers so clearly; though it didn't seem he was aware of using any magic himself. Indeed it might only be the type of thing that manifested when he truly needed it, as magic often did.  
  
Veser's head was down now, lowered almost to the floor while he resisted giving into his despair. “Please,” he continued to say. “C'mon, man, _please.”_  
  
Some bit of Ples, the instinctive rule-following part (which was probably more than 'a bit', as even he would admit it made up a fair amount of his personality), wanted to tell Veser that no amount of 'please's could do what he was asking, and once a person was dead they were dead and the living had to move on, but he was feeling now that it was patently untrue. Every new plea that fell from the young man's mouth and dripped off his soul was like water eroding the reaper's firmness on the matter, and he started to think that maybe it was not only possible but that there was really no reason why he _shouldn't_ do what he could to bring this man back to life.  
  
Furthermore, Veser was offering his aid, practically begging to become an indentured servant or whatever Ples wanted. Ples had never put a human soul back in their body, so Veser's assistance might prove valuable. And on top of that, well, it had been quite some time now since there had been someone the reaper could speak with on a regular basis, someone who _wanted_ to communicate with him (and didn't smell like death warmed-over). He was aware that he might be overestimating the young man's commitment to him as a _being_ , rather than him as a bestower of grand wishes, but he went along with it anyway.  
  
“Alright,” he said, and found himself smiling at the disbelieving hitch in Veser's voice. “I'll accept the deal. In exchange for your servitude, I will restore your uncle to his body.”  
  
A wave of tangible relief washed over Veser, though it was only a moment before he stiffened and looked up sharply at Ples. “But not like a zombie though!”  
  
Ples laughed lightly and shook his head. “I will make it like it never happened.” And somehow, despite his lack of experience in such a thing, he didn't doubt his ability. “Should we go at once? I'll need your assistance locating your uncle's soul.”  
  
“Yeah, alright,” Veser said, standing. He took a moment to compose himself, as he was still clearly a little overwhelmed by the situation. He took a deep breath. “Alright, Mr., uh, grim reaper, sir.”  
  
“It is Ples Tibenoch,” he responded. Then he laid a hand on Veser's upper arm. “Think clearly of where we need to be, and close your eyes.” Veser did, and Ples took them there.  
  
It was the upper rooms of an old theater that they found themselves in. Ples could see that Veser was terribly familiar with the place, in a way he wished he wasn't. This was where Lee Falun had apparently committed suicide; this was were he was murdered. And it was quite strange, in Ples' opinion, that Veser was not more fixated on _that_ aspect, although he supposed that if the man were brought back to life, then his murder would be of little consequence.  
  
Veser took the whole ordeal in stride, doing just as Ples asked when he needed to point out where his uncle's body had been found, to focus on drawing the man's soul, to close his eyes and clear his mind and _hold_ it. Ples found the wayward soul-- _Lee Falun; gentle, but troubled; a streak of obsession, but kind_ \-- and he held it carefully and temporarily in one hand, while with the other he grabbed and twisted at the essence of time that misted around him. Softly, he set the soul down where it needed to be and released time back into its natural flow, piece by piece, like sand sifting through his fingers until it had all fallen back into place.  
  
He found himself alone again; everything had changed. He could feel that Lee Falun and Veser Hatch were alive, on the other side of town, in a house that was different from the one he had encountered the young man in just minutes before. There was no turmoil surrounding the essence of the man who had been a ghost, save what he himself brought. His soul had a sense of fragility, but it was nothing that would not heal over time.  
  
For a moment, Ples intended to go to Veser, to follow up and make plans regarding their agreement, but he felt emanating from the young man's direction a sense of peace, and he thought far be it from he to interrupt that. A good deed should be its own reward, he told himself, and he went about his business.  
  
But before too long-- sometime within the next week, as humans calculated it-- he heard the whispering voice of Veser Hatch play in his mind again, and it was _not_ only a regretful memory of what could have become companionship. It was clear as day, distinctly different from the whine of dead souls, though as he listened closer he found that it was not at all similar to the desperate prayers he'd heard the week before either. Curious, he went to the young man.  
  
Veser was sitting with his feet up on the desk in his bedroom, looking rather bored. He didn't seem to be in any sort of distress, although he was alternating between chewing on the end of a ballpoint pen and tapping it against the arm of the chair, as if he was perhaps a little irritated.  
  
When Ples heightened his presence and appeared by the window, Veser jolted but managed not to yell. The young man's shock faded into indignation rather quickly.  
  
“You're gonna give someone a heart attack like that!” he said, almost a shout, but very quiet, as it seemed he was trying to keep his voice down. Ples noticed that Lee Falun was in the house as well and wondered how he was doing.  
  
“I heard you calling,” he told Veser. “Is something wrong with your uncle?”  
  
“Huh?” Veser asked, as though he'd forgotten about the situation. He wouldn't have, though, Ples was sure. He'd made it as if Lee's death had never happened, but only to people who weren't particularly affected by it. (And to Lee himself, of course.) It would have been damn near impossible to make Veser forget, even if he'd tried. “Oh, uh, no,” Veser responded. “He's good. Thanks.”  
  
“Glad to hear it,” Ples said. “So then, with what do you require my aid?”  
  
Veser sat up straight and took his feet down off the desk. “My work schedule,” he told the reaper, picking up a sheet of paper with a sort of time-table on it, already filled out. “I just got my class schedule for this semester, so I need to know if I'm gonna be able to work around it or if I need to change some things.”  
  
Ples felt and probably looked a little dumbfounded. “Your schedule,” he repeated back to Veser. Something like that hadn't even occurred to him. For the first thing, he'd been quite sure that if he never mentioned it, Veser would eventually forget about pledging himself to Ples, or pretend that it had never happened; mortals were like that. And he certainly hadn't thought about the young man's need to balance 'working' for the reaper against his other responsibilities.  
  
“Yeah man,” Veser said. “Look, I can't just quit school, alright? I just brought Lee back from the dead. I'm not about to disappoint him by being a fucking dropout. Even though school sucks. So I need to know what my schedule's gonna be. And, like, what the hell I'm gonna be doing.”  
  
Reasonable requests, Ples was sure, though he wasn't prepared to answer them quite yet. He said, “Yes, well,” hoping that didn't sound too much as if he had no idea what he was doing. Half turning away from his apparent assistant, he slowed time to a crawl, 'til all around him he could feel the particles moving at a reduced rate. He took this time to think.  
  
Although he'd accepted Veser's offer to work for him, Ples really didn't have anything he needed help with. His job was rather a simple one, and not something that another could do for him. But he found that he wanted this, an assistant. A _protege_ even, perhaps. After all, he wasn't likely to want to stay a reaper forever, if history was to be believed. He would need someone to pass his skills on to, and Veser seemed... well...  
  
It was something he'd have to consider, but perhaps at a later date.  
  
For now, he needed a task for his young assistant: something that wasn't too complicated, but which would still be useful if Ples did end up passing the torch to him. Although the primary focus, he supposed, was to find something Veser _could_ do. He allowed time to speed back up and turned to respond to Veser.   
  
“Time is of little concern to me,” he said, waving nonchalantly. “Pick any hour each day when you aren't busy, and that will be the time.”  
  
“Yeah, okay,” Veser said, sounding dubious about such an instruction. “And what am I supposed to do for that hour?”  
  
Ples smiled, and pulled a soul out from an invisible pocket of space-time. “If you've the time, I'll teach you now.”  
  
Honestly, it was just as likely as not that Veser would be a horrible pupil and entirely unable to learn the skills Ples had to teach. It probably wasn't something that just anybody could do, or so was the impression he'd gotten from his predecessor. But he had a good feeling about Veser Hatch, and even if it didn't work out, well, Ples was ...excited to try. The worst that could happen was nothing, and the best-- there was no way to know. Rather like time itself, possibilities were as endless as the chances you could take to make a change. And as an immortal, that could mean as much or as little as he wished it to.  
  
And if it turned out badly: that's what time-altering powers were for, wasn't it? 

 


End file.
